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I was beginning to understand the Bard’s point about parting being such sweet sorrow. I was becoming a hopeless romantic, thanks to Stig.
The city fell away as I rode closer to The Sanctuary, and my heart beat faster, as if it could feel me approaching Stig.
Soon we would be reunited, if only briefly.
I tried not to get my hopes up. There was no telling how much time he would have for me, but any would be better than nothing. Maybe we could go out on another date later tonight.
It was Friday, so at least one of us didn’t have to go to work in the morning, giving us a lot more time together— if, indeed, it worked out. I told myself to just wait and see.
“Congratulations,” Sven said, opening the door as I approached the recording studio.
“For what?”
“Being right on time.”
He was right, of course. The hands of my watch overlapped on the twelve, and there wasn’t one note emanating from inside The Sanctuary.
“Food is here,” Varg announced to the band.
The trio came out to meet me. Looking hungry, they each accepted my offerings with quiet thanks.
“Hello again,” Stig said, once it was his turn to grab the food.
“Hi,” I said to my boots.
I should have at least been able to look at him but was felled by a fatal dose of shyness. Were we alone it would have been different, but I was never one for an audience, especially when I was afraid to do or say something that would give our secret away.
“Van?” he asked.
“Sure.”
There was only one other car in the parking lot, which must have belonged to Sven.
No one would have to know if we got up to a bit of mischief in the back. I felt like such a bad girl for wanting a lunch-time hook-up, but it also turned me on.
It wasn’t like the normal me at all, but Sven had a strange effect on me, one that made me want to throw my panties off for him every chance I got.
Stig, however, because I didn’t make these desires plain, was a perfect gentleman, merely asking me about my day and laughing as I detailed Seth calling me into his office, not to scold me for being late as I’d feared, but instead to express concern for my well-being.
As we ate together, Stig said that everyone cares about me, and it was touching how happy he was about that fact. It wasn’t an act, either— he didn’t even move to take any of my clothes off.
Ordinarily, I would have taken it as an insult if a guy didn’t try to get in my pants again after we’d shared such hot oral sex together so recently, but after even our relatively brief time together, I knew it was just how Stig was, which was a respectful guy, under his bad boy rockstar image.
And that was just what I needed right now.
Stig had defended me from Keith and was helping me not feel so broken when it came to men. He was the first guy I’d opened up to and been vulnerable with ever since I had lived through all the awful stuff Keith had done to me.
And to Stig’s credit, he barely reacted to the parts that were still obvious, particularly without my makeup. The scar under my left eye, made by shrapnel from a beer bottle, was never going to heal.
I’d accepted that and, particularly with Stig’s help, I knew I could move on. Even if, sometimes, it was the invisible wounds that hurt the most.
After we were done eating, Stig smiled at me and thanked me for keeping him company over lunch.
“No problem,” I told him. “My pleasure.”
“Would you like to go out again?” he asked me.
“Sure.”
“How about tonight? We could catch a movie. Except there’s just one annoying thing, and that’s that Sven is keeping us all a bit later tonight than usual, because we’ve got to play catch up.”
“On what?”
“The album. I’m still not sure how it happened, but I started playing differently yesterday. Maybe it was because of a certain beautiful woman I met.”
I blushed, and he smiled at me before continuing.
Had I really had that much of an effect on him? I wondered.
“Everyone liked it, so we’re redoing the whole album that way. It’s no big deal, really. It will just be a couple more days on the schedule, with a few more hours of recording each day. And it will be well worth it for the results. We’re still getting the weekend off— at least I think and hope so, anyway. And you and I can go out tonight after Sven lets us out of the recording session.”
“Good, so a late showing will work?”
“Absolutely. They’re less crowded anyway.”
After hammering out the finer details, we kissed on it, sealing the deal, and I left him to his work, as I returned to mine, wondering what the weekend might hold for us.
